response 58 of 82:

Sep 16 01:17 UTC 2002

Re #54:  That's chicken-and-egg, Jan.  Without an anchor, it's
impossible to link to it.  Nevertheless, providing the opportunity
for people to do things you hadn't necessarily thought of beforehand
is a nice gesture.  (Bruce Schneier's CryptoGram newletters have
anchors all over the place, making it very easy to link directly
to the section of interest.  The facility gets used, too.)

response 60 of 82:

Sep 18 14:25 UTC 2002

The polls are now open for voting on a proposed amendment to Grex's bylaws.
Briefly, the proposal is to allow telephone conferencing or similar electronic
means to count as valid attendance at Board of Directors meetings.

To vote, or simply to see what the proposal says, telnet to Grex and type
"vote" at a Unix shell prompt, or "!vote" at almost any other prompt.  Any
user can cast a ballot, but only the votes of members in good standing will
be counted in determining the outcome.  Bylaw amendments require a 3/4
majority of those members voting in order to pass.

The polls will close at the end of the day (EDT) on Saturday, September 28.

response 62 of 82:

Sep 19 03:07 UTC 2002

I vote for h.323 meetings.

response 64 of 82:

Sep 19 20:12 UTC 2002

Why are you voting on whether or not to follow the law?

response 66 of 82:

Sep 21 02:35 UTC 2002

Actually, we think we care about our opinion.  The state isn't listening.

response 68 of 82:

Sep 22 06:51 UTC 2002

Duh, no man, you must have superior knowledge to the rest of us because you're
the only one who reads Rane Curl's posts on Michigan Law here on Grex.

You do an amazing amount of gloating over the fact that you've half understood
an issue.

So here's why you're wrong anyway.  A couple people say that state law says
that "meeting face-to-face" includes phone meetings.  Maybe so.  Maybe not.
If this motion gets turned down, and if a board member wanted to attend
meetings by phone, what would happen?  Well, he or she would have some legal
arguing to do.  Yes, phoning in probably counts as being present.  However,
does the state law require that meetings be held someplace with a phone merely
to accomodate someone who wants to phone in?  I doubt it.  Would the state
law prevent Grex from amending it's bylaws to put a residency requirement on
board members?  I doubt it.  (In fact Arbornet has such a requirement on most
of its board seats.)

This vote is a choice between two paths - allow out-of-town members, or not.
The "allow" choice *could* be made without an amendment, but people will be
confused by the current wording for years to come, because it is not obvious
to most people that a phone call is face-to-face.  So if we want to take the
"allow" path then it is still useful to amend the bylaws.  If we take the
"disallow" path, then a bylaw amendment will also be needed, probably saying
something about residency requirements.  Either way, a vote is needed.  Would
you prefer we were doing the other one?

If the amendment passes, then the way is cleared for someone who wants serve
as a remote board member.  That person won't have to be quoting Michigan Law
at us.  They won't have to be trying to convince the board that they should
meet someplace with a phone.  This is different than what will happen if the
amendment does not pass.  Thus something changes.

response 70 of 82:

Sep 22 20:39 UTC 2002

Changing bylaws cannot make bylaws harder to change in the future unless
the change is in the adoption procedures for bylaws, such as in the plurality
required, or the number of readings, etc. Such changes are not being
proposed, much less discussed.

I think it should be repeated again what state laws says on this. From
450:2521:

"(3) Unless otherwise restricted by the articles of incorporation or
bylaws, a member of the board or of a committee designated by the board
may participate in a meeting by means of conference telephone or similar
communications equipment by means of which all persons participating in
the meeting can hear each other. Participation in a meeting pursuant to
this subsection constitutes presence in person at the meeting."

If the bylaws are not amended, a reasonable conclusion is that remote
attendance is not allowed. The proposed amendment changes this by stating
that remote attendance is equivalent to "face-to-face"  attendance. The
amendment does not state how remote "...electronic..."  attendance is to
be implement, but it also does not provide that the corporation will
provide the means for this. I would interpret the bylaw to mean that the
board member would have to provide the means. Since this would be
permitted, it would not be legal to try to prevent such participation
(e.g., by holding the meeting where "...  electronic..." means was
impossible or prohibitively expensive.

response 72 of 82:

Sep 23 14:09 UTC 2002

Re #70: as I said in the discussion item, the amendment leaves it up to the
board to decide who pays for the phone connection.  It would certainly be a
reasonable expense for Grex to buy a phone capable of conference calling. 

response 74 of 82:

Sep 23 16:32 UTC 2002

Even without "unlimited calling", one can get costs of less than 0.05/min,
which makes a two hour meeting cost all of $6 - and its tax deductible
if you itemize. I think anyone serving on a non-profit board is expected
to cover their own attendance costs: besides, you can nosh at home instead
of in an expensive restaurant. 

response 80 of 82:

Oct 22 14:09 UTC 2002

I started out using it, but I haven't done a Slackware install in a few
years.  I do use Vector Linux, which is a sort of hacked-up, stripped
down Slackware install, on a low-end laptop I have.  You might try
posting to the Jellyware conference, that's where most of the discussion
of UNIX and UNIX-like OS's goes on.

response 82 of 82:

May 22 12:34 UTC 2003

Welcome to Grex, phat3.  It gets easier.